In this episode of The Self Love Podcast, Kim chats with educator, business mentor and late-diagnosed ADHD advocate Karen Dennett about navigating motherhood, business and life while learning to understand herself in a whole new way. Karen shares her journey of balancing family responsibilities with a demanding career, carrying the mental load so many women experience, and the impact of discovering her ADHD later in life. From time blindness and distraction to processing difficulties and the challenges of feeling like she should be able to do it all, Karen reflects on how her diagnosis helped her reframe years of self doubt, recognise her strengths and better understand both herself and her son. Together, Kim and Karen explore mother guilt, the pressure to meet others expectations and the importance of finding practical support rather than judgement.

Karen also shares how her experience as an educator and entrepreneur inspired her work supporting women in business through Hello Monday, a weekly business practice program designed to make progress feel more manageable through simple systems, focus sessions and community accountability. This conversation is a beautiful reminder that self love isn’t about getting everything right or pushing harder; it is about understanding your needs, working with your brain rather than against it, and allowing yourself the space to process feedback without taking it personally. Karen encourages us to let go of the labels and narratives others place on us and to define success on our own terms.

About Karen
Karen Dennett is a Perth-based educator, award-winning business mentor, mum and founder of Hello Monday, a business community and skill-building program supporting women to build micro-businesses alongside real life. With more than two decades of experience across education, communications, marketing and leadership development, Karen combines practical structure with empathy and emotional intelligence to help women make meaningful progress without the pressure to do it all.

A late ADHD diagnosis in her 40s changed the way Karen understood many of the things she had struggled with throughout her life, particularly around organisation, overwhelm, motherhood and the feeling that she should be coping better. Looking back, she recognised how much shame she had carried around things she had interpreted as personal failings. Her diagnosis gave her a different lens through which to understand herself and, importantly, helped her begin the process of self-forgiveness.

Today, Karen supports women to understand how they work best, challenge the expectations and beliefs that keep them stuck, and create businesses and lives that fit their actual values, capacity and circumstances. Her approach combines practical strategies, supportive structure and Kaizen, the philosophy of making small, consistent improvements over time.

Karen is passionate about helping women move away from the idea that they need to constantly fix themselves or “go all in” to be successful. Instead, she encourages women to build businesses that support the lives they actually want, with greater self-awareness, self-compassion and sustainable progress at the centre.

Her definition of Self Love is: Self love is being able to give myself that space to reflect.
To give myself time to process and really examine what has been said and decide, what part of that person’s narrative is on them and is theirs to own and what part is genuine feedback that I can take on board and maybe shift.

Her favourite quote is: You could be the juiciest peach on the tree and there will still be people out there who don’t like peaches.

Links to follow:
Website: https://www.karendennett.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karendennettmmm
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-dennett-868507138

All new Hello Monday members receive an impact and goal setting Kickstarter valued at $295.

Quotes:
Sometimes it is a case of if we don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. It is the mental load that we take on.
There are some really significant things that you can do for yourself that actually mean working smarter and not harder.
You have to parent as if you don’t work and you have to work as if you don’t parent.
I was trying to be everything and do everything.
When I got the diagnosis and really understood that actually it is more of a delay in processing, and it takes me a while, I get time blindness and there is a whole range of other things.
You want to take on more because you don’t want people to think that you are not capable or you can’t handle it.
I realised that I have actually got a ton of strengths and I am trying to be everything and do everything, which I can’t possibly do.
Being willing to ask for help and not be ashamed but also being able to redefine who I am as a person and what that means for me.
Letting go of other people’s narratives and realising, this is who I am, this is what is good and what I need to work on.
Sometimes you just need someone to say, where can I help you? Or say you are obviously struggling with this. Let me take some of that on or let me help you.
I never associate struggle with learning as poor behaviour.
When you have a diagnosis, especially for me, later in life, it helped me to process and understand I genuinely am experiencing this, it is genuinely a challenge that I have.
It is not pigeonholing or categorising yourself in a certain space of that I can never be able to do that.
Strength doesn’t have to be doing everything. It is about working out what you want outcomes to be, how you want your life to be, how you want to lead your life, what goals do you want to achieve? What do you want to accomplish?
There is no shame in asking somebody and you don’t necessarily have to learn the skills.
You can have a business, you can achieve them, but you just look at what do I do? What do I delegate? Or what do I automate?
It is about embracing Mondays without the overwhelm, without the stress.
Be the best version of yourself.
Give yourself space to process.
Be willing to be kind to yourself

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